


Truth, Justice and Rodney McKay

by Siria



Series: Not in Kansas [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-21
Updated: 2007-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-03 19:35:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Because, Rodney," Elizabeth said, "they got <i>pictures</i>."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truth, Justice and Rodney McKay

**Author's Note:**

> This began life as a comment ficlet for trinityofone, was shamelessly encouraged by amireal and randomeliza, and shaped into something approximating the English language by the beauteous sheafrotherdon. Trust me that I feel vast and appropriate amounts of shame for what I have wrought.

"_Okay_," Rodney said, trying to keep the phone pressed between ear and shoulder while juggling one cat (who was being suddenly and suspiciously affectionate), one large mug of coffee (dark roast, _hot_, no milk, no sugar), one file (stuffed full of notes that were more organised than they seemed, plus one very hastily typed article) and one pair of pants, which he was attempting to pull on without the use of either hand.

"No, Rodney," Elizabeth said, voice tinny and loud in his ear. In the background, Rodney could hear rustling paper and what sounded like Radek's voice, raised in frustration. "It's not okay. Do you know how many other papers have scooped us by now? Our front page carries Gary Kavanagh's searing exposé of mild corruption in the city water department, while the front page of every other morning edition has screaming banners about our star reporter and his meeting with this, this 'Superman' as they're calling him—"

"You know," Rodney said, dumping the cat and wriggling his jeans up past his hips, "that's really alarmingly Nietzchean—"

"Feel free to name him later," Elizabeth said icily, almost cold enough to make Rodney wince. "You can call him anything you want—once you have a story filed for the afternoon edition."

"I'm on my way in," Rodney said, "honestly, I have the article typed and ready to go, it's good, it's _really_ good—"

"—once you've let Laura proof-read it, of course."

"—yes, yes, Cadman can beat me over the head with the serial comma as much as you want, because suffice to say? This is definite, definite Pulitzer material, and I will be rubbing it in Sam Carter's face for _years_." He knocked back the last of his coffee and dumped the mug in the sink, before depositing the cat in the bedroom, despite Elroy's loud protests.

"Fine." Elizabeth sighed, and for the first time, she sounded like a very harried editor-in-chief who had been awake and fielding irate calls since four in the morning, when her star reporter had been spotted _flying_ over the city in the company of one very enigmatic, very mysterious, very _male_ alien. "Just—get in here as soon as possible, please. Oh, and if I were you? I'd take the back door out of your apartment building."

"What?" Rodney said, "Why?", throwing his laptop bag on over one shoulder while he wrestled with the lock on his door.

"Because, Rodney," Elizabeth said, in a voice of infinite patience, "they got _pictures_."

Rodney opened his door to a wall of light and sound, cameras flashing and a hundred people—well, other journalists, at least—clamouring at once.

"Mr McKay, what was it like to kiss an alien?" the small woman at the front of the crowd said—Rodney knew her, Miko something? From the _Chicago Sun-Times_—while every photographer in the place took advantage of his momentary confusion to snap some wonderfully high resolution pictures of his slack-jawed expression, of his hair still rumpled and ruffled from lack of sleep.

"Have you always known you had a preference for _male_ aliens?" Heightmeyer (_that_ hack, Rodney thought viciously) asked, a concerned expression on her face.

From somewhere in the back, someone yelled—_what was his name?_, Rodney thought to himself, _that new guy, Shepton? Shepley?_—"Are the rumours of tentacles true?"

"Oh my god," Rodney snapped, "you people are all _vultures_," before slamming the door against the roar of their questions.

Even with the door closed, he could still hear them through the thin wood; switching on the tv to drown them out while he called Elizabeth back didn't help, because he was currently headline news on CNN, ABC, and jesus fuck, _Fox_.

Rodney sat down heavily on the couch, and buried his head in his hands. "He had so better be worth a Pulitzer."

* * *

"Oh my god, are those _helicopters_ overhead?" Rodney said as Ronon hustled him down the back stairs and outside to a waiting car. Apparently, Elizabeth felt that her best war correspondent was the ideal person to get Rodney to the offices in secrecy.

"Radek planted a false lead in one of the news feeds," Ronon said, face calm but still sounding amused. "Said you were spotted heading up to the roof to take a chopper to the airport and then probably out of the country."

Radek had obviously been convincing. The swarms which had been waiting outside Rodney's apartment building had all taken off in pursuit of an empty helicopter, and Rodney and Ronon made it to the Planet without anyone the wiser.

Rodney hopped from foot to foot on the way up in the elevator; said "Oh, for fuck's sake," when he caught Ronon looking at him with a particularly shit-eating grin on his face; and was so pissed off when he was greeted by the spectacle of an utterly silent newsroom that he had to down two cups of coffee before he was calm enough to yell at them all to stop being such morons, jesus, you'd think no one else had ever made the front page of the _New York Times_ on a first date.

He was interrupted mid-tirade by Radek trying to herd him away from the copy-editors and into Elizabeth's office. "Oh for—" Rodney said, "It's because of people like you, you... photographers, that I'm in this mess in the first place. You with your _photograph taking_."

"Yes," Radek said, "Truly, this was a capital offence, Stalin would have had me shot, please go see Elizabeth before she fires us all."

He put one hand on the small of Rodney's back and pushed, stoically ignoring Rodney's protests as they moved through the pen. Rodney himself was so busy trying to ignore the inhabitants of said pen that he was bitching on autopilot. Katie and Laura were whispering and glancing over at him; Kavanagh was looking at him, expression half-smirk and half-disgust; the new guy—the one Elizabeth sent to sit on the doorstep of _her own reporter_, to poke and pry and ask questions about _tentacles_, and he was not still pissed at that—was openly grinning.

"You are all dead to me," Rodney hissed, before Radek pushed him into the office and closed the door marked "Elizabeth Weir: Editor-in-Chief" behind him.

Elizabeth was sitting behind her desk waiting for him, fingers steepled, for once neither working nor surreptitiously playing Solitaire. "Rodney."

"I can totally, totally explain," Rodney said, holding his hands up as if to ward her off from going for his throat. The look on her face didn't make that a far-fetched idea. He went to sit down across from her, but looked up when he felt eyes on him, and saw about three dozen curious faces staring in at them. "Oh my god, you are all so fired!" he yelled through the glass before pulling down the blinds.

"We've had conversations about firing the staff writers before, Rodney," Elizabeth said blandly.

"They deserve it this time," Rodney muttered, sitting down heavily.

Elizabeth arched an eyebrow. "You can't tell me that you're finding their reactions _surprising_, surely? Not with you making the front page of every major newspaper in the world because you are apparently secretly involved with the biggest news story of the _century_."

She pointed to the array of newspapers spread out on the desk in front of her, all of which displayed large font ("We didn't merit ninety-six point font in the _New York Times_? Please, I think we at least equalled Nixon.") and even larger photos. The photos weren't particularly distinct, especially when enlarged to such an extent—but the barefoot guy in the jeans and the long-sleeved t-shirt, being held, being _kissed_, hundreds of feet up in the bruised sky of the Metropolis night, was undeniably Rodney McKay.

There was no question as to the identity of the other person in picture—that tall figure, with its close-fitting black costume and its shock of dark hair, was a familiar stranger to everyone who had so much as glanced at a newspaper or a tv over the past six months.

Rodney sat back and folded his arms. "Yes, well, perhaps some interest is to be expected. I—I wasn't really thinking. We weren't. At the time," he said stiffly.

"Yes," Elizabeth said, a hint of amusement creeping into her voice as she gathered the papers into a neat pile, gaze lingering on one photo which seemed to show definite groping. "So I'd gathered."

There was the awkward pause which Rodney presumed must always follow moments where your boss had clearly ogled the picture of you getting your ass pinched by your alien... whatever. Rather than address it, he chose to dig out his story from his bag, tossing the slim file over to Elizabeth. "I know it's late," he said, making an indeterminate gesture with his hand, "and I should have called, but, well, with everything—and it's all there, you know, though I know the formatting is a bit, um—"

He trailed off as Elizabeth began to work her way through the article. She made no comment as she read, but she raised an eyebrow at several points and toward the end, she raised both.. "This is an excellent article, Rodney," she said, sounding a little surprised, as if she hadn't expected it to be very good at all.

"Well, of course it is," Rodney snapped. "What, you think just because I've had my tongue—I mean, you think that just because we've, uh, had a moment together, that I'm not going to do my job?"

"The thought had crossed my mind," Elizabeth said dryly. She hadn't been working at the Planet when the controversy arose over one of the sources in Rodney's expose on American-Russian trade corruption, but everyone knew that his affair with Alline had caused untold problems. She wasn't anxious to be in charge if a similar situation were to arise now, especially since this was one of the biggest news stories she would likely see in her career as editor.

The set of Rodney's jaw was quickly becoming mutinous, so she hurried to assure him that she didn't think that was the case. "This is—well, it's quite extraordinary," she said. "He's been around for six months, and no one else has found out so much as his name. You're with him for three hours, and you find out he's, and I quote 'not from around here', probably not from this _galaxy_, and that he likes 'football and things that go fast'," she finished in a strange voice.

"Yes," Rodney said in a smug little voice. "The things you find out when you've had your tongue down someone's throat."

Elizabeth's mouth twitched. "Okay," she said, "Go. Take this down to Laura so she can repair your fondness of comma splices and send it down to the presses."

"Fine, sure," Rodney said, scrambling out of his chair, almost enthusiastic to face the witch Cadman for once.

"Rodney?" she said just as he reached the door. He turned back to look at her. "Everything is okay, right? You're okay?"

"I'm good," he said, mouth turning up a little, the first time he'd smiled in hours. "I'm really, really good, Elizabeth."

* * *

He dropped the article off on Cadman's desk, demonstrating once more that he had the patience of a saint, given that he managed to ignore her smirk and her innuendo and the way she made kissy faces and said "Don't you think 'I Spent the Night with Superman' would be a better title, Rodney? Or how about 'Superman and Me: The True Story of my Alien Hunk of Burnin' Love'?"

Of course, he did flip her off when she wolf-whistled him, but he wasn't an actual saint.

That accomplished, he stalked over to his desk, unsurprised to find that his usual detritus had been buried beneath a mound of Post It notes and letters, and one large and glossy print of one of the photos—Radek's work no doubt, that little Czech weasel. The crowning glory was sitting on top of the pile—one of the souvenir Superman dolls which had been sold on the streets of Metropolis within about a week of the man's appearance, arranged in a very compromising position with a naked Ken doll.

"Oh, _very_ mature," Rodney yelled to the room in general, "I meant it about firing you!" He snapped the head off both dolls, before dumping them and almost everything else from his desk into the trash.

He booted up his computer, groaning at the number of e-mails which had accumulated in his inbox overnight—most of them from Jeannie, sporting subject lines which showed just how many variations she could spin on 'Meredith Rodney McKay, call me now!' He was going to have to speak to her about her punctuation abuse. There was even one, terrifyingly enough, from his _father_, and that alone was enough to make him suddenly and extremely creative with his swear words. This might not have been the ideal way to confront the man with the horrifying truth of Rodney's bisexuality.

"You know," someone said from the desk across from his, "you might want to consider looking into those anger issues."

Rodney glared over the partition to see who was idiotic enough to come near him right now. "I beg your pardon?" he snapped. "Who the hell are you? No, wait, don't tell me, I recognise you—"

The guy arched an eyebrow.

"—you're that new guy Elizabeth hired for the Metro section, what is it, Shepsky? The one she sent to sit on my doorstep and ask me inane questions about tentacles."

The eyebrow climbed even higher, but the man's voice remained even. "It's Sheppard, John Sheppard. And the inane questions about tentacles were actually more of a freelance thing."

Rodney snorted. "How nice to see that initiative isn't lacking in the younger generation of reporters."

"Younger generation?"

Rodney flapped a hand in his direction, attention already returning to his overflowing inbox. The CIA wanted to interview him? Again? "Perhaps not in chronological terms, but given that I was winning awards for journalism since you were probably in what, junior high? And that I'm a shoo-in for this year's Pulitzer, I still think it's a valid observation."

Out of the corner of his eye, Rodney could see Sheppard grinning to himself. "What?" he said "_What_?"

"Nothing," Sheppard said, in a tone so bland that Rodney _knew_ he had to be screwing with him, "It's just interesting to see that even in the workplace, your reputation isn't an exaggeration."

Rodney stared over at him while Sheppard went to work, rolling up his sleeves before opening up a Word document and typing with the kind of painstaking slowness that always made Rodney want to scream and do it himself. _Even in the workplace_? he thought to himself, knowing full well where most of his reputation had been created, _what the hell did that mean?_

* * *

The rest of the afternoon was surprisingly quiet. After the first flurry of interest from the rest of the staff, people remembered that they had work to do, and drifted away to their own desks or out of the building to do research. There was still plenty of interest in him from other papers, of course, but the newsroom at the Planet was, if nothing else, a haven from their attention. With him safely sequested in his cubicle, they were forced to content themselves with tearing apart his article in a seemingly tireless quest for facts, information, psychological motivation, and suppositions about the fabric used to make Superman's outfit.

Rodney gave up even an attempt at working after an hour or so. It wasn't like he would be able to produce anything else that day which could top the article which had led the afternoon edition, and he found himself strangely unable to concentrate, anyway—distracted by the memory of soft hair under his fingertips; the rush and roar of the wind around them; warm lips against his own.

He closed the index of sources he'd been half-heartedly compiling for one of his ongoing exposés, and opened a game of Minesweeper instead—if he was going to waste time, he supposed, he might as well waste it trying not to get blown up in a tiny, pixellated fashion.

He'd just succeeded in beating his own high score when a large mug of coffee materialised in front of his face. Rodney accepted it gratefully, taking his first sip of the scalding liquid before he even turned around to see who had brought it to him.

"Rodney," Teyla said, hooking a spare desk chair with her foot, pulling it over so that she could sit cross-legged on it, "I thought you could use some caffeine."

Rodney's mouth twisted sideways. "I could always use caffeine."

"True, but this is one of the few times I agree with you." Teyla's mouth quirked upwards before she took a sip from her own mug—judging by the smell coming from it, Rodney thought, it held one of those strange tea blends which Teyla seemed to subsist on.

"It's been an interesting day," Rodney conceded, focusing his attention on the mug in his hands. For someone who never touched coffee, Teyla had the uncanny knack of obtaining the good stuff. "Though probably in the Chinese sense."

"You have aroused some controversy," Teyla said, slowly, as if choosing her words with great care. "For various reasons, not least of which is the fact that it all seems to have been so sudden."

Rodney looked at her narrowly. "This is leading somewhere, isn't it? This is one of those conversations you like to spring on me every now and then where you ply me with Kona because you want to know about feelings and emotions and, and stuff." Teyla just looked at him until Rodney sighed. "Fine, fine," he said. "What do you want to know?"

"What do you wish to tell me?"

* * *

Though Rodney would, of course, commit seppuku with a stapler before admitting it, he did feel a little better after talking with Teyla. It wasn't that he'd been upset at what had happened, no matter what Teyla might have gently insinuated, but he might go so far as to admit that he had been a little overwhelmed. Maybe. He hadn't been expecting anything like—well, he didn't think anyone would have expected _exactly_ what had happened. But he hadn't been expecting anything remotely like that to happen to him. His lips still felt bruised.

Once Teyla left him, Rodney made another attempt at getting some work of his own done. It was edging toward evening by now, and the newsroom was slowly emptying, all but the most ardent workaholics switching off their computers and heading for home. Radek was still sorting through photos for the weekend's society supplements, and Ronon was on the phone with one of their foreign correspondents, his words a low, soft murmur of Arabic. Apart from them, the area around Rodney was empty—with the exception of course of one John Sheppard, who was on the phone, attempting to charm information out of the mayor's notoriously reticent personal assistant. It was hard to gauge the level of success; Rodney thought the laugh might be working against him—it sounded genuine, but it also sounded a little inhuman, like there was a donkey sitting at the desk opposite him.

Sheppard hung up sometime after seven, with another laugh and a "Sure, Marjorie, lunch sometime would be great, you take care too."

Rodney stared over at him.

"What?" Sheppard said.

"You got asked out for lunch by Marjorie Moretti? You got Marjorie Moretti to be _pleasant_ to you?"

"Yeah," Sheppard said, cocking an eyebrow at him. "Why not?"

"Because people have said they would rather spend time with me than with Marjorie Moretti, Sheppard. _Voluntarily_."

"I don't know, Rodney," Sheppard drawled, ignoring Rodney's snappish reminder that he preferred to be addressed as Mr McKay by acquaintances. He leaned back in his chair and stretched out both arms, which were surely cramped after so long on the phone. "I think you're both kinda nice." The sunny grin which accompanied that was just _infuriating_ for some reason, but before Rodney had a chance to tell him exactly what he thought of him, the newsroom erupted, an explosion of noise as every phone in the place started ringing, as every tv screen in the place began flashing news alerts.

"What the—"

"Hostage situation," Radek yelled across the room, before Rodney had the chance to find out what was going on. He listened intently to the person on the other end of the phone line for a few moments before continuing, "At the mayoral reception downtown. At least a dozen terrorists, maybe more, all armed. No confirmed reports as to who is in the building, but the guest list lists the mayor, Luthor, Cowen—"

"Okay," Rodney said, grabbing his jacket and his bag, "I'm heading down there. Radek, you come with me, Ronon, you see what you can find out from the police department, Sheppard—"

When Rodney turned around, though, Sheppard was gone. Rodney glowered. "Come on, Radek," he snapped, running for the elevator, because there was no way he was letting that floppy-haired moron get there first and scoop him.

* * *

Helicopters and police cars, dozens of journalists and an even larger crowd of curious onlookers, were all milling around the Metropolis Grand Hotel by the time Rodney got there—or 'hostage central', as he heard one of the reporters refer to it on a live newscast. Rodney bit back a snort. Rodney weathered a dozen curious looks as he fought his way close to the action. Looks he could handle, but anyone foolish enough to bring up the events of that morning earned themselves a scathing glance and a succinct "bite me" as he passed.

He was quick to get the attention of the police officers who were maintaining a cordon around the front of the hotel, but there wasn't much he could browbeat from Detective Ford that he didn't know already: the hostages were being held in the ballroom, no demands had been made, and no shots had been fired. Everything looked suspiciously quiet - the building was dark, and there wasn't any movement Rodney could see.

In the absence of anything productive which he could do by following procedure, Rodney decided to do what he did best—ignore said procedure and plough ahead until he got where he wanted to go.

The security cordon at the front of the hotel was solid, but lax at the side, and Rodney managed to force open the door of one of the unguarded service entrances without any of the Keystone Cops noticing. The power must have been cut, either by the police or by the terrorists—the stairwell he found himself in was dark, lit only by the green glow of emergency exit signs.

Rodney made his way up the stairs, keeping one hand on the wall to guide himself. It was a while since he'd been in this hotel, but he still had a vague map of the place in his head, and he knew that the ballroom was somewhere on the second floor. He climbed slowly, all too aware of the harsh sound of his breathing, the way his Converse squeaked on the steps. He had a moment of horrible clarity—the kind he inevitably experience between his resolve to go after a story and the moment when his work paid off—and suddenly sincerely doubted his own sanity.

"Just—think of wide open spaces," he told himself. "Wide open spaces where I'm holding a Pulitzer, two Pulitzers, one in each hand, and Sam Carter is busy telling everyone how I am right, right, right. Wide open spaces, okay. Okay."

He took a breath, and let himself out onto the second floor. It was darker here, the corridor lit up only fitfully when helicopters passed close to the building. He took a moment to orient himself—the Metropolis Grand's version of luxury was a uniform one, and the same thick carpets and dark woods stretched away from him in either direction—before taking a chance and heading to the left. He was soon rewarded with the sounds of voices, some raised in anger, others in fear, and followed them around one final corner until he came to the ballroom. The doors were flung open, the heavy mahogany raked with bullet holes, and at the far end of the room, Rodney could see a huddled group which had to be the hostages.

"Paydirt," he whispered.

"Amen," said a voice behind him, and Rodney swallowed heavily when he heard the click of a gun's safety very, very close to his ear.

* * *

Despite his protests, Rodney's hands were soon cuffed behind his back, and he was hustled to the far end of the room to sit with the hostages—_well_, he corrected himself morosely, _the other hostages_. He flashed a weak smile at them. "Mayor Carew, Mrs Carew, Mr Luthor, Mr Cowen... assorted other people I don't know... I wish we were meeting under, uh, more pleasant circumstances."

Luthor snorted at him. "You're the cavalry? Great. I'd hoped at the very least for your boyfriend."

Mrs Carew burst into tears at the sight of him, and Rodney had to repress the urge to roll his eyes. One slightly ill-advised metaphor in one article, and the woman had made something of a career out of turning up on _Dr Phil_ claiming press harassment and post-traumatic stress disorder. The Mayor just looked vaguely uncomfortable, not that Rodney could blame the man; guns and hysterics made him nervous too.

"Shut up!" one of the men standing over them said. "I told you to be _quiet_." Like the rest of the group—Rodney had seen maybe half a dozen or so scattered throughout the room—he was masked and heavily armed. And like the rest of them, he seemed very young; his grip on the semi-automatic in his hand was firm, but his voice shook a little when he spoke.

Rodney stayed very quiet.

Luthor didn't seem inclined to keep his mouth shut, though. He wasn't shouting, but there was a tone to his voice as he attempted to bargain, as he offered money and weapons and the use of his influence, which made it clear that he hadn't that much patience left. If Luthor's patience was running out, however, it was clear that their kidnappers had none left at all; their leader backhanded Luthor viciously, splitting open his lip, the blood stark against his pale skin even in the dim light.

Mrs Carew shrieked again, burying her face in her husband's shoulder, just as Rodney said "Stop! Just—listen, please, this isn't going to get you anywhere. If you'll just be reasonable, everyone can get out of this without getting hurt. I'm a reporter, I work for the Planet, I can make sure that your story gets told, okay? I promise. A full interview with you, you get to present your side of things in depth, to hundreds of thousands of readers, not just to us."

He'd thought that maybe it might work; it had before with kidnappers, with people who were threatening to jump, with people who were confused and terrified and who really just wanted someone to talk to, more than anything else. One or two of the group stirred a little, and _maybe_, Rodney thought, _maybe_, but the leader shook his head.

"No deals," he said, and he sounded for all the world as if he were quoting from a handbook, like one of those very earnest college kids in Che Guevara t-shirts whom Rodney ignored every time they tried to flag him down in the street and tell him how big business was killing Mother Earth. "No negotiations with evil. No talking. No more _lies_. We're through with that. It's time for decisiveness, it's time for action, it's time to show the world—"

"Is it Hammer Time, too?"

Rodney's head jerked up, because that voice, that tone, he knew—at first, he couldn't see where it was coming from, but then he saw a slight movement in the shadows in one of the corners of the room, a blur of familiar black on black as someone stood up from the wall they'd been leaning on. _Oh, thank god_.

"Because," the voice continued, coming closer, and now Rodney could see their rescuer, "I was never any good at that whole dance routine thing. Just not co-ordinated enough."

_Now that,_ Rodney thought vaguely, _that is just a lie_, because Rodney had never seen anything like the way he moved when the group open fired at him. There was a strange kind of grace to his movements, fluid and quick, so quick, dodging some of the bullets, stopping others with—oh god, Rodney realised, with his _bare hands_.

The noise got louder, the sound of gunshots more frequent as certainty gave way to desperation, and Rodney thought he could hear shouts coming from outside in response to the sounds, over the yells of the other hostages. Most of them looked away, even Luthor pressed back against to the wall for greater safety, but Rodney, Rodney couldn't look away from him—and then it was over, quicker than Rodney would have thought possible, all of the terrorists disarmed and left lying in a heap in the middle of the ballroom, limbs splayed over the polished wood—unconscious but not, Rodney thought, badly injured.

Rodney watched as he made sure they were secure, checked one or two for their pulse, before nodding to himself as if satisfied, and making his way over to the window. There was a roar of sound this time, "Superman! It's Superman!" clearly audible in the sudden silence of the ballroom; and Rodney thought there must have been some kind of pre-arranged signal, because the room was suddenly flooded with sodium-bright light as every bulb in the place came back on.

Another blur of movement and then he—Superman, Rodney thought, that's what other people called him—was standing in front of them all, hands on his hips, grin on his face, saying "What say we get you folks downstairs? There are some paramedics waiting to check you over, and I'm sure the police would like to have a chat with you once they've finished with these guys here?" And Rodney wasn't able to stop himself from grinning back.

* * *

That changed, of course, as soon as the police swarmed into the building, a fully-fledged SWAT team in the lead—quick enough, Rodney said, to lead the way once the threat had been taken down. There were medical exams, and statements taken by the police, followed by attempts by other reporters to interview Rodney ("Mr McKay, were you targeted because of your relationship with Superman?", "Mr McKay, did your life flash before your eyes?" "Mr McKay, does the Man of Steel live up to his name?"—and he was _so_ going to fire whoever let Cadman outside, thinking she could do actual journalism), and by the time Rodney had a little space to breathe again, to look around him, Superman was gone.

He may have been a little pissed at that. Just a little—so much so that when Sumner came over to yell at him about half-assed stunts and threatening to ban Rodney from coming within a mile of any crime scene, he exploded spectacularly enough that Rodney had to be hauled away by Ford before he suggested the full and tragic extent of Sumner's recto-cranial inversion in front of many watching cameras.

"Just go home and get some sleep, man," Ford said, leading him away from the crush towards the patrol car which had been commandeered to take him home, "The Chief'll be calm again tomorrow, you can get your story then."

Rodney tugged his jacket straight and shot one final belligerent glance over at Sumner before snapping "Don't worry, Ford, I've had enough newsworthy excitement over the past day to last me a lifetime," and clambering into the back of the police cruiser.

The ride home was a quick one; the traffic at this time of night was light, and all Rodney had to do was respond with grunts to Officer Griffin's chatter, still riding high on the adrenaline of near-death, the anger of once more being left behind with nothing but a "So long, Rodney," when all he had was more questions.

"You have a good night now, Mr McKay!" the officer said when he dropped Rodney off outside his building. Rodney just grunted at him, plodding up the stairs to his apartment. His footsteps only got heavier when he realised that he'd left his bag back at the Metropolis Grand—the bag containing his laptop and his PDA. He swore sharply and kicked at the stairs, but there was no way he was going back for it now; the chances were that the MPD had already filed it away as part of the crime scene evidence, and everything on it was encrypted and backed up anyway. He'd go looking for it in the morning.

Luckily, the keys to his apartment were still stuffed in one of the pockets in his jeans, and within a very short period of time, he was able to clamber over the stacks of flyers and letters and petitions for time alone with Superman which had accumulated in front of his door, and get inside. Grabbing a Molson's from the fridge, he collapsed onto the couch in the darkened living room, took a long pull from his beer, and said "God, what a shitty day" to the ceiling and no-one in particular.

"I don't know," someone said from over by the window, "I thought it all worked out kind of well, myself."

"Jesus fuck," Rodney said, and an almost full bottle of Molson's upended itself all over his 'Reality has a well-known liberal bias' t-shirt. He struggled upright and shot a glare over in the direction of the window. "You know, if you're not going to knock or ring the doorbell like any normal person, you could at least have the good grace to make yourself more visible. Wear primary colours—"

"I like black. Goes with everything."

"—or, I don't know, I could put a collar and _bell_ on you, I'm sure the cat has one to spare." Rodney flicked on the table lamp just in time to see the raised eyebrow that got him.

"Kinky, Rodney. I didn't think you had it in you."

"Yes," Rodney said, gesturing back and forth between the two of them, one beer-soaked journalist and one alien, one _man_, who could fly, and whose smile made Rodney's stomach lurch. "Because clearly _I_ was the man of mystery in this... whatever... was." He pulled the sodden material of his t-shirt away from his stomach, wrinkling his nose a little. What a waste of good import beer.

"Was?"

Rodney lifted his chin, jaw tight. "Was I supposed to infer something different from the pattern of you leaving without so much as a word? Or is the 'Fuck you, Rodney' part just implied when you show up, do your thing and leave me to the media circus where you're lauded as the embodiment of the American way, while, while Bill O'Reilly refers to me as the 'Canadian whore' and questions my work permit?"

It was possible that the last twenty-four hours had aggravated him more than he'd let on, or that he'd even acknowledged to himself.

Swearing, he stood up and stalked into the bedroom, slamming on the light and startling the cat, who had been napping in a nest made out of Rodney's bedsheets. Elroy hissed wildly, teeth and claws bared. Rodney just glared at him, well-used to such behaviour, before pulling his t-shirt over his head and tossing it into the heap of clothes in the corner of the room which he optimistically referred to as his laundry hamper.

Rodney cleaned himself up in the tiny en suite, pulled on a clean t-shirt and swapped his jeans for sweatpants, before heading back out, intent on making inroads into what remained of that six-pack of Molson's. He startled a little, though, on walking back into the room and finding Superman—him—still there. Rodney had thought—well, extrapolation of past behaviour would have indicated an empty apartment, at the very least.

This was different. This was better.

"What—" Rodney said, then paused when he saw the look on the other man's face. "What should I call you?" he said instead.

"I beg your pardon?"

Rodney waved a hand around. "Well, I can hardly call you Superman in, in the throes of passion, now can I? It would make me feel like I'm fucking an Übermensch—or, well, going by past history, getting to second base with an Übermensch—and that's hardly the height of mental health, even for me."

That got him a considering look for a minute, tongue flickering out across his lower lip, like he was nervous, as if he had expected Rodney really would just throw him out and have done with it. Finally, he said, almost hesitant, "In Alteran, my name is Ghán. Ghán n'Anám."

Rodney stared, then blinked. "Yeah, I'm just going to stick with, I don't know, John."

An arch of the eyebrow. "John?" he said flatly.

"Well, yes." Rodney waved a hand around, as if motion would make explanation quicker, easier. "Easy to remember, sounds like... whatever the hell you just said your name was. Besides, you look like a John."

"I look like a John?" A tilt of the head, and an appraising look, followed by a grin and some kind of tension uncoiled in Rodney's gut, tension he hadn't even known he'd been carrying. "Sure, I can see why you might want to call me John. Solid, dependable, all that good stuff."

Rodney snorted and said "Dependable sort of requires you to stick around."

John said "I can try."

"Because you showed up out of the blue, literally—"

"You have no idea." John's expression was amused, but Rodney could see that his hands were shaking, just a little; and what did it take, Rodney wondered, to shake that kind of strength?

"—and you vanished just as quickly, and you keep doing that, over and over, and I have _no idea who you are_. You're not human, and you're not—with everything, I don't know if I should trust you—"

"Rodney—"

"—but I kind of do anyway, and you," Rodney said, and took a step forward, oddly hesitant. "You've sort of saved my life a number of times now, and I'm kind of getting used to that, and I'm getting used to you a little, so if you could stay, and not leave me to—"

"Rodney," John said, and his voice was a little hoarse, and his hands were fisted at his sides.

"John," Rodney said, and took a step forward. "John," he said, when strong arms wrapped around him, warm enough to make him shiver. "John," he said, against soft lips, into John's mouth, letting his fingers card into hair that felt like raw silk—and later, much later, he fervently said "Oh, you are _so_ much better than a Pulitzer," and closed his eyes against the force of John's smile.


End file.
